Nine 12.6 feet by 10 feet vinyl portraits were strewn across the quad on billboards, tables or the ground, and staff, faculty and students were invited to color them however they wished.
"I was worried because the weather didn't look good and the food was supposed to be outside," said Artist-in-Residence Wendy Ewald. "But I was amazed at how much people got into it. It was much deeper than I thought it would be." She said many students and staff participated, though not too many faculty members.
The community artmaking event grew out of Ewald's class "Collaborative Art," taught in collaboration with guest artist Brett Cook. The class decided it wanted to do a project that would focus on the divide on campus between staff, faculty and students.
The class selected six students, six staff members, and six faculty members to feature in the project. They were interviewed, photographed, and eventually half were immortalized on the black outlines laid across Valentine Quad on Friday.
"I have to admit that I found the black-and-white vinyl drawings amazingly expressive as they were, without any colors, and felt a twinge of regret at the thought of covering them with pastels," said Elizabeth Barker, Director of the Mead Art Museum. "But I was pleasantly surprised by the colored images that emerged on Friday,"
The portraits were not completely colored in, and Cook will fill in the gaps. Once he's done, the portraits will be included in a very public art display.
According to Ewald, the nine oil-pastel portraits, in addition to nine photographs of the other subjects, will be placed all over campus. In groups of three, there will be outdoor displays on Chapin Chapel, on the Route 9 side of Buckley, on the steam plant across the train tracks, behind the Amherst College sign on Route 116, and in between Garman and Porter House. There will also be an indoor display in the Mead, which will eventually make its way outside the museum.
Installation will begin the week after Thanksgiving Break, and there will be a grand opening at the Mead on Nov. 29. The displays are expected to stay up until Commencement.
Each of the photographs, taken by Ewald, will have a quote from the person in the photo painted onto it. In addition, a podcast will be available, allowing visitors to walk from display to display while listening to excerpts from the subject's interviews.
Friday's art-making event was complemented by several outdoor musical performances, as well as special food offerings at Valentine. According to Director of Dinning Services Charlie Thompson, Cook asked him if he could serve something special outside that somehow incorporated the community. Thompson decided to tie the event into "Massachusetts Harvest for Students Week" promoting local foods. Because of the threat of rain, the food was moved inside.
In Valentine, there was a sushi station, chili station, wrap station, cheese/cracker and fresh vegetable station and fresh fruit station. Thompson said a number of special events have been planned for this year at Valentine, including cookie decorating, omelets to order, Chocolate special, fresh bread and soup night, and sushi special. There will also be a Luau special some time in April.
Because the food was inside, crowds weren't too large at the art-making event, but there was a steady stream of community artists all afternoon. "When I visited the installation on Friday, I loved seeing dozens of people transported by their creative experience-too absorbed in their coloring in some cases even to talk to each other," said Barker. "Seeing so many people transported by their coloring reminded me again of the basic human need for self-expression. That impulse to create-and the drive to understand the resulting creations-lies at the heart of so much that museums like the Mead-and liberal arts colleges like Amherst-do."